


Dreams of the Morrow

by Leonawriter



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Dreams and Aspirations, Gen, Mid-Canon, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 23:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16229411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Genesis had always known exactly where he had wanted his life to go. Until it had all been derailed. And then - well. When you're looking for a means to cheat death, the future is something that happens to other people. Until it isn't.





	Dreams of the Morrow

By the time he was ten years old, Genesis knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

It wasn't carrying on the legacy of his parents in Banora, and it wasn't - as much as he loved the orchards, and as much as he loved the taste of the apples - to further it, and only ever be known for the things he could do with dumbapples.

He spent day upon day taking notes and paper and a torch, exploring the old caves under the town, not understanding everything he saw, but finding it beautiful in a serene, otherworldly way. 

When he was down there, he felt  _safe._ He didn't know what from, just that he was, and he'd copy out the letters he found there enough times that he could recite the verses of the poem, which his parents said were from a  _play_ , by heart.

 _There is no hate,_ the lines read at one point, the stone cracked and weathered but the words still legible,  _only joy. For you are beloved of the Goddess. Hero of the Dawn, Healer of Worlds._

He wanted that to be him.

He  _promised himself_ that was going to be him, one day.

...

Becoming SOLDIER should have made him feel that much closer to his goal, and he did feel stronger, he did feel tougher, but... in some ways, he didn't feel changed at all.

His dream of wanting to meet with, to  _befriend_ the great hero Sephiroth was a lot more complicated than he had first imagined. It wasn't as though he could just come up to the other boy and just  _ask_ , it wasn't as though he could be so forward as to  _assume-_

In Banora, Genesis had never known the experience of being less important than someone else. Even if they were condescending, the adults always had to at least hear him out.

But now? 

Sephiroth was most often too busy.

To their instructors, he was just another country boy who'd never seen a 'real fight'.

(He trains so hard just to prove them wrong, the instructors and Sephiroth both. He rises through the ranks, Angeal by his side, and they recognise him, just as he knew that they would. 

He won't admit that he thinks that they're right when his first assignment to the war effort leaves him shaking and retching the moment he's away from everyone else, even Angeal, because he has his pride, and he won't let them see him like this. Fighting monsters was easy - human beings took something more.

He wants to say it gets easier, but all he does is distance himself so that it doesn't bother him, and they aren't the same thing at all.)

...

He finds out that he isn't even human, and more than that, that he's  _dying_ , and the world - his dreams - come crashing down.

Monsters, after all, don't have the luxury of  _dreams._

Monsters don't have pride, and they don't have  _honour._

...

He doesn't stop believing, doesn't stop searching, because he  _can't_ stop.

If he stops, he might never get himself back up again. 

If he lets himself think, he might start to ask himself those selfsame questions that a newly-minted First had started to ask him, questions he'd ignored as much as he could.

If he let himself give in, he might die without ever having put his mark on the world-

He can't die, he  _can't._

(Monsters might not have honour, but they can get scared, and they can panic, he finds. And tries not to think about that too hard. It's easier to think of dying as a thing that happens to other people.

Sometimes, it's easier to think of himself as a monster, because to think of himself as human meant that a human being could be capable of such things, and those are thoughts best left well alone.)

...

It's years of time and distance from everything he once knew before he lets himself think of  _dreams_ again. 

He had drifted his time away, and then he had slept, but there is a difference between being alive and living, and he should know. He had been one and not the other for far too long, long enough that once he started to realise that was the case, he wasn't even entirely sure  _how_ to live.

He finds new clothes, somehow. 

A room above a bar becomes an apartment all of his own.

The hunts he'd done out of sheer restless energy became  _paid for_ , not like his old Shinra salary, but still a wage. And when Cloud was away, and Tifa was busy - they went to and relied on  _him._

But it's only on one odd day in the middle of the year that he's sitting at the table with Cloud, and Tifa, and Denzel, and Tifa asks him  _Have you got any ideas what you're going to do with yourself next?_

He pauses in the middle of lifting his fork to his mouth, and he stares at her, and blinks.

It's then that he realises that he  _doesn't know._

 _"If you want to be a hero, you've got to have dreams,"_ he remembered Angeal saying. He has a vague memory that he might not have been the only one Angeal had used the line on, either. 

But what happened when you didn't have a dream? When you weren't sure- when the Goddess had almost outright  _told_ you that you were no hero?

"Hey." A small voice snaps him out of his thoughts, and he blinks again, looks over at the owner to find Marlene smiling at him. "It's okay not to know what you want to do yet. Cloud didn't know for the longest time, did you?" Cloud shrugged, although his mouth was full. Belatedly, Genesis realised that some of what had been on his fork had dropped back onto his plate. The fact that he could just  _hear_ Angeal teasing him over that created a pain in his heart. "There, see? And I don't know about Denzel, but... I don't know what I want to be yet either! It's.. a new world, after all."


End file.
